BEIJING — China and a number of African nations agreed Sunday on 16 trade and investment deals valued at $1.9 billion, as Beijing extended its efforts to create a broad economic and diplomatic partnership with Africa, a resource-rich continent.

President Hu Jintao also pledged to extend $5 billion in loans and credits to Africa, forgive past debts and double foreign aid to the continent.

The aid announcement and deal-making capped a weekend of meetings that brought high-level representatives of 48 of the 53 African countries to Beijing. It was an unusually sweeping initiative by China, which until recently had tended to focus mainly on domestic development rather than overseas.

Though China supported socialist, postcolonial African leaders in Mao’s time, it had largely withdrawn its attention from Africa in the 1980s and 1990s as it accelerated market-oriented growth at home.

More recently, Hu has made cultivating new economic and diplomatic ties to Africa a foreign policy priority even as the United States concentrates on combating terrorism.

Analysts say the main purpose is to secure supplies of natural resources, especially oil, iron ore and copper, for China’s booming economy.

China has also sought to build diplomatic support among African nations for its priorities at the United Nations and other world organizations, where it does not always see eye to eye with the United States.

The Chinese government has also pushed hard to reduce the number of countries that extend diplomatic recognition to its rival, Taiwan, and even invited the five African countries that have relations with Taiwan to its meeting. The five did not attend.

The official New China News Agency said the business deals with 11 African countries announced on Sunday covered infrastructure, telecommunications, insurance and mineral resources.

On Saturday, Hu announced a broad aid package that included loans, debt relief and technical assistance. He said that China would provide $3 billion in preferential loans and $2 billion in preferential credits over the next three years and that by 2009 China’s annual aid to Africa would be double the level this year.

“Common destiny and common goals have brought us together,” Hu said.

China’s outreach to Africa has been criticized by some in the West for ignoring large human rights violations or serious corruption in countries that it has courted, including Sudan, Zimbabwe and Angola.

Western and African economists have also complained that China’s approach is reminiscent of a mercantilist strategy European nations once followed in Africa because it focuses on extracting natural resources and raw materials from Africa and selling finished manufactured goods back there. The critics say this does little to foster long-term economic development in the impoverished continent.

The weekend forum, which consisted mostly of formal ceremonies, handshakes and banquets, did not completely address those concerns.

Hu and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said they would encourage more two-way trade with Africa. They said China would increase to 440 from 190 the number of African exports that would be allowed to enter China tariff free.

They did not specify what items were on that list.

, but if they included more manufactured goods, the offer could dampen criticism that China does not do enough to promote African manufactured goods.

The huge gathering, which attracted 1,700 official delegates and many other participants, also let China show how it could ensure smooth traffic flow and even shut down polluting industries to clean up the air during a giant event — a preview of how it intends to handle the Olympics in 2008.

Wen predicted that bilateral trade with African nations would top $100 billion by 2010. Trade between China and Africa increased tenfold over the past decade, reaching almost $40 billion last year, and is expected to reach $50 billion this year.

Around 5:35 p.m., CHP officers responded to a report of the incident in westbound I-580 lanes at Main Street. En route, officers learned a vehicle's driver said a person in another vehicle brandished a handgun and fired a shot.

In addition to evacuating 10 neighboring homes, deputies restricted pedestrian and vehicle traffic in the area while the sheriff's office bomb squad "safely disposed" of the explosives, officials said.